When the Price girls show up at their parents’ house for Passover, their mother Lilly opens the door and laments, “You’re early! You’re all early.”
Hardly an expected greeting from a mother whose four daughters have taken up the pilgrimage home for one of the most important and celebrated Jewish holidays. But Lilly’s reaction sets the stage, so to speak, for what’s to come: A heartwarming, sad, hilarious and realistic look into a family that’s coming to grips with memory and reality.
The Last Seder brings together Lilly and her husband Marvin, who is suffering advanced stages of Alzheimer’s, and their four unique daughters for the last Passover before Lilly sells the house. Amidst packing boxes the family comes to terms with the end of an era.
“This is a comedy-hyphen-drama, and that’s really a fair way to describe it,” said Art Feinglass, the director of Jennifer Maisel’s The Last Seder.
The play’s cast of experienced actors are all members of Temple Beth Am. Feinglass is in the process of forming the Seattle Jewish Theater Company, which will perform three to four Jewish-related plays per season. He and the players are pleased with the response the play has garnered so far: half the tickets were sold within the first five days of sales. With this kind of response, Feinglass says he is optimistic about his budding theater company.
In their rehearsal classroom at Temple Beth Am, the cast gathered around to share their experiences about the production as it enters its final weeks.
“This is like the Tevye stories that became Fiddler on the Roof,” Feinglass said. “You have different daughters, each one confronting a different aspect of late 19th-century challenges.” In this version, “one daughter’s a lesbian, one daughter’s a workaholic, one daughter’s trying to find her art, and one runs away all the time.”
“It’s not really a dysfunctional family,” said Floyd Reichman, who plays Lilly’s neighbor and romantic interest, Harold. “It’s a family that really can’t find themselves and therefore lacks this cohesive force that a lot of families manage to sustain. They’ve all gone off in their own opposite directions and forgotten about what it is to be a family.”
Dawn Cornell, playing second-oldest daughter Claire Price, described the essence of the family as separate nuclei. “You’re the gay one, I’m the workaholic, you’re wandering, you’re searching, and I think this is the first time in a long time that we’re coming together and understanding each other.”
“So I think it’s fair to say dysfunction doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” said Jo Merrick, who plays oldest daughter Julia.
Listening to their emotional and thoughtful reflections, it was hard sometimes to tell when they were speaking as characters and when they were speaking about themselves.
“I dreaded Passover, on so many levels,” said Cornell. “You love the traditions, you love being part of it, but it’s like, if Aunt Mabel asks me one more time, “˜When are you gonna have a baby, Claire, when are you gonna get married Michelle…?’”
The cast members agree wholeheartedly that they internalize their roles and find the performance cathartic.
“I think there are a lot of people in the cast who are experiencing aspects of their own lives,” Feinglass said. “It’s blended. The characters have been infused by the actors and the other way around.”
The group, until now boisterous, grew quiet and pensive. Several cast members shared that they see their own personal trials and tragedies reflected in their characters.
“My mother was schizophrenic,” Merrick said. “So for me, I’m watching my mother’s situation.”
“We were probably all in tears the first time we read it,” said Feinglass. On the first read, “I was crying, and a bunch of other people were crying, and then when we did it we cried again, then we did it again and we cried again. We should be bored by this already.”
Playwright Maisel has managed to weave scenes of poignancy and humor together in a way that Feinglass and the cast members predict all types of Jews as well as non-Jews will be able to relate: The dynamics of family holidays across the spectrum. Feinglass chose the play in part for this reason.
“It’s warm, it’s funny, it’s dramatic, but it’s also at the end very touching,” he said.
“I think the audience will see a lot of themselves,” said Carol Silverstein, who plays one of the Price daughters. “I think they’re going to be sitting there and going “˜oh my God, that’s my family.’”
Passover comes with a Price
